


I'm Only Me When I'm With You

by xkailajayx



Category: Marvel, Marvel 616, X-Factor (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: F/F, Other, Sexuality Issues, Transgender, mtf
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-19
Updated: 2012-05-19
Packaged: 2017-11-05 15:58:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/408285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xkailajayx/pseuds/xkailajayx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ric wasn't born this way. Well, she was. Everyone knew it, because it wasn't something she was ashamed of. And why should she be? The only thing she was ashamed of... Well, it wasn't shame, exactly. It was fear. <br/>(An AU fic in which Shatterstar was born female and Ric was supposed to be, but wasn't.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm Only Me When I'm With You

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be a bit of a slow start, dealing with Julia's transition from when she starts presenting. It'll be a while before we see Star. I hope you decide to stick with it! Updates should be at least once a fortnight for now, I'll set a weekly/bi-weekly date when I'm more into the swing of writing this.

It took a while to find a dress that fitted right. She might have been thin, she might not be so broad and strong as others in her class, back at school, but she was a little taller than she should be, her hips already too slim. So it’d taken a little while, to find the right dress. Several shops, several weeks, months, almost. They’d tried on so many, her father taking a handful of afternoons off work, flashing his credit cards as her cousins held up polyester and cotton against her small frame. They found shoes in their tens, and she even got some pretty matching sets of vests and panties with little flowers on them in bright colours. She loved shopping, all of a sudden, when she’d used to despise it, hated being dragged from shop to shop. Now she lit up when her father came home early and asked her if she’d like to try to find the right dress. It took thirty-five days to find the right dress in a small tailor’s shop.  
  
But it was the right dress, and she loved it, literally, she would discover, to pieces. The worn fabric just gave in one day, the seams refusing to be patched, the bodice motheaten and losing its colour. Though she was never without a piece of her favourite green dress, held close to her heart as a reminder of her salvaged childhood.  
  


***

  
“It doesn’t fit right.” Julia frowned, looking up at the older girl. The skirt of the dress felt too loose around her hips, the straps not tight enough at her shoulders. The dress was one of her younger relatives, her age, or thereabouts. Most of her relatives were much older than she was, and several of them were currently assisting her with her dress.  
  
“It won’t yet, chica. You are... Only young.” One of her ‘cousins’- not a blood family member, just yet another family friend’s child- told her, clucking as she looked at the hem of the dress. Julia’s father had told them to find her something, and not to ask questions. However much she might resent the fact she’d been sent to boarding school so young... The holidays made up for it. Her father bestowing her with gifts, with compliments. She didn’t have a hard childhood, nor a poor one. She didn’t remember the mother she’d lost and the mother she’d gained had never stopped her from doing whatever she wanted, though she knew the older woman wished she could stop her step-daughter from doing what she needed to do. People would talk, and that wouldn’t do, she knew the older woman thought, and the sideways glances her stepmother had been giving her since her father had found out her secret had told her more than words ever could about her replacement mother’s opinion about her new hairclips and bracelets and dresses.  
  
She fiddled with the dress. It reached her knees, and was pink. There was a bow at the back, which Julia saw in the mirrors surrounding her. She moved her hips gently from side to side, watching the fabric swish around her, floating around her legs and eventually coming to rest in the same place the fabric of the skirt had settled when she’d pulled it on. She smiled at the curve of the ribbon in the mirror, tied into a bow at the base of her spine, fiddling with the ends. She let the soft material slide through her fingers, rubbing her thumb against it. She must have pulled a little too tightly because the whole bow came loose.  
  
“Stop fiddling, chica.” Her cousin admonished, retying the bow and smoothing the back of the dress. A slight blush crept over Julia’s cheeks as she looked down, nervously. “Now. Time to choose shoes, un poca de.” The older girl said, pointing out two pairs. This was going to be Julia’s first time wearing her dress in front of the family, and her father had promised that she would be able to wear it more often in future.  
  
She wanted to prove that her father’s trust in her was rightfully placed. That she could make a good girl. She bit her lip, her dark hair falling across her face. “I like the purple ones best, prima.” She said, nodding her head at them. Her cousin smiled appreciating her taste and placing them in front of the young girl. Julia slid her feet into them and fastened the buckles, standing back up straight. She turned back to the mirrors, twirling in front of them. She smiled widely to herself. She looked every bit the little princess she’d always really wanted to be, and a strange hurt had eased itself most of the way away already. And it hadn’t quite yet finished, she found, as Agata- her cousin- held out a final touch.   
  
“Your father gave me this, for you.” She said, smiling at the nine year old. Julia gasped, holding her hands out. “No, no, chica. We don’t want you breaking your new gift.” Agata walked behind Julia, fastening the clasp at the base of her neck. A small golden star rested above the neck of the dress and she raised a hand to gently touch the pendant. She smiled widely, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. She was ready to face her family as Julia.  
  
It was nerve-wracking, walking out in front of her family, her father and his brother, her stepmother and step-siblings. Knowing this was the first time they’d all seen her together, as a family, when she was dressed and wearing her pretty shoes and with her hair fixed up high. She really loved her hair. It was thick and dark, straight, but easily curled.  
  
Her fringe had grown since the last time she left for school, and she was hoping she wouldn’t have to cut it again at the end of the summer. She loved being able to tie her hair back, decorating it with clips she’d sneaked from female relatives her age, smiling at herself in the mirror and ripping them out the moment she heard anyone on the stairs. But sometimes she forgot, and sometimes she almost wasn’t fast enough.  
  


***

  
He’d been home from boarding school almost three weeks when his father caught him asleep in her racecar bed with the butterfly clips she’d taken from Agata. He expected screaming, and being thrown from his bed and having his room searched, the little dress he’d hidden in the back of his closet taken from him, but he just sat by his bed, and sighed.  
  
“Julio, do you want me to brush your hair out for you, or call one of the maids?” He asked, looking down at his youngest son- only son, by blood if not law- with softer eyes than the child knew his father had, though he had little to no reason to fear anything from his father. Julio shook his head, pausing for a second before nodding.  
  
“Padre... Could you?” He asked, almost silent. His father stood and picked up the brush from his side table, unclipping the colourful butterflies from the long dark brown hair and combing through the knots in silence. The older man didn’t say a word until he’d finished.  
  
“Do you wish to have some of your own?” He asked, when he was done, the clips in his hand. Julio nodded, unable to raise his eyes to his father’s. “And clothes, perhaps?” Julio frowned. He was so confused, had his father gone through his wardrobe and found the dress?  
  
“I... Padre, I do not know.” He said, nervously. “I... didn’t think about that...” He scooted back to his pillows, further away from his father. He wasn’t sure what would be right to say, whether the truth- that he hated, so much, being lumped with all the boys, that he wanted to be able to dress in the dresses and pretty tops and pink trainers that the girls he saw when he wasn’t away at school got to wear every day. He envied them so very much, their long hair in braids and pigtails, clinging to dolls and pink books about fairytale worlds. He wanted that.  
  
“I don’t want you to be sad, un poco de.” He said, resting his hand on his son’s shoulder. “And if you wish to dress... differently, I will help you.” He said, looking down at the young boy. His eyes had always reminded him of his mother, the dead woman who’d given him this final gift. There was little he could turn down when it came to the child, whether it was a new book, game, or toy, and now it seemed that it might be girls clothes.  
  
“Si, Padre. I think... I would like that. If you don’t mind.” Julio said, finally managing to look up at his father.  
  
Three weeks later she was her father’s chica, and in many ways it was like she’d been nothing but.


End file.
